Kingdom Hearts 3&colon; Riku's "Other Him&quest;"

The Kingdom Hearts 3 community was recently blown away by the two epic trailers that dropped during the D23 2018 Expo in Japan. The trailer that I will be talking about today is the second trailer, which debuted the new theme song for the game by Hikaru Utada. More specifically, I'll be examining a scene at the end of the trailer with Riku and King Mickey (wearing the awesome outfits given to them by Master Yen Sid).

Here we see the duo in the realm of darkness on the dark shore. Riku's Way to Dawn Keyblade is broken (and we obviously don't know why or how yet). Riku walks up and plants the broken blade into the ground while saying he doesn't need it anymore, so the other "him" can use it.

This brings up a load of questions that the fandom is trying to figure out. I may have done just that, sort of ....

There are three possibilities as to who Riku is talking about. The first and most obvious choice is the Riku Replica from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. The last time we heard from him was back in Castle Oblivion, when Sora had managed to save Namine from Organization XIII. The Riku Replica was freed from being controlled by Vexen (Organization XIII Member) and was allowed to live his own life in the castle. This could be who he is talking about, as this clone used the powers of darkness, and he could have ended up in the realm of darkness.

The next possibility is that somehow Riku has his own Nobody, just like how Sora and Kairi have their own as Roxas and Namine respectively. This is possible because during the events of Kingdom Hearts 1, Riku let the darkness take control of his heart and lost his body to Ansem. This could be an unorthodox way of making a Nobody, so maybe Riku can sense his Nobody and is leaving his Keyblade to him so they can join them and see the light.

The next and last option is the personification of Riku's dark half that was revealed in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. This version of Riku is all of the darkness that he had built up and abused during the first game when he was working with Maleficent. With such a strong tie to the realm of darkness, it's very likely that this "version" of Riku could be the one he is mentioning to Mickey.

As with any Kingdom Hearts trailer or news, we are always left with way more questions than answers, so we will just have to wait and see what he means when the game comes out later this year.

What are your thoughts on this? Who do you think Riku is talking about? Comment below and let's talk it out!